Psychology in "Remember the Titans"
Kyle Duffy
PSY 341 Remember the Titans is a 2000 Walt Disney Film starring Denzel Washington. The film is based on the true story of a 1971 high school football team in Virginia during their first year of desegregation. Herman Boone, a black man, is picked to be the head coach of the team which causes uproar with members of the white community. When Boone named coach, the white players threaten to boycott the football program. Because of this, the previous coach Bill Yoast, a white man, decides that he will team up with Boone to coach the team. Both the coaches and players have to go through many difficult trials and tribulations, most attributed to racism during this time period. There were many different social-psychological principles touched in this movie and in this paper I will explain three of them. First of all, the most obvious and evident social-psychological principle in this film is racism. Racism is defined as “an individual’s prejudicial attitudes toward people of a given race, or institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race.” There are countless examples of racism in the film Remember the Titans. In fact, it could be argued that the basis of the movie is racism and not football. The most extreme forms of racism in this movie are from white people directed at black people. For example, there is a scene where somebody throws a brick through Coach Boone’s window because he is black. This is an obvious sign of racism because one race is showing hatred towards another person just because they are a different color. Another example of white on black racism in the movie is when an opposing team’s coach calls coach Boone “a monkey” and says that his players are going to “knock the chocolate out of them (Boone’s players).” Again, this is another sign of obvious racism because the white man feels he is superior to the black people solely based on his race. While examples of racism such as this were
PSY 341 Remember the Titans is a 2000 Walt Disney Film starring Denzel Washington. The film is based on the true story of a 1971 high school football team in Virginia during their first year of desegregation. Herman Boone, a black man, is picked to be the head coach of the team which causes uproar with members of the white community. When Boone named coach, the white players threaten to boycott the football program. Because of this, the previous coach Bill Yoast, a white man, decides that he will team up with Boone to coach the team. Both the coaches and players have to go through many difficult trials and tribulations, most attributed to racism during this time period. There were many different social-psychological principles touched in this movie and in this paper I will explain three of them. First of all, the most obvious and evident social-psychological principle in this film is racism. Racism is defined as “an individual’s prejudicial attitudes toward people of a given race, or institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race.” There are countless examples of racism in the film Remember the Titans. In fact, it could be argued that the basis of the movie is racism and not football. The most extreme forms of racism in this movie are from white people directed at black people. For example, there is a scene where somebody throws a brick through Coach Boone’s window because he is black. This is an obvious sign of racism because one race is showing hatred towards another person just because they are a different color. Another example of white on black racism in the movie is when an opposing team’s coach calls coach Boone “a monkey” and says that his players are going to “knock the chocolate out of them (Boone’s players).” Again, this is another sign of obvious racism because the white man feels he is superior to the black people solely based on his race. While examples of racism such as this were